dreaming in the treetops
by hyacinthian
Summary: by the time of the reaping, peeta mellark is already prepared to die.


A/N: Preseries through The Hunger Games.

* * *

_Let me tell you a story about war. A fisherman's son and his dead brother sat on the shore. That is my country and this is your country and the line in the sand is the threshold between them, said the dead brother. Yes, said the fisherman's son._

_You cannot have an opponent if you keep saying yes._

_Richard Siken, War of the Foxes (i)_

* * *

The first reaping he is meant to attend, Peeta has just turned twelve, and he cannot will himself to stop shaking. He spends an hour in his small bedroom in the corner of the house, fogging the windows with his own breath, writing his name in the steam that collects.

The house will remember him.

The house must remember him.

And how could he forget the house? The way its gnarled fingers carry the smell of fresh bread through the crevices of their wood floors to collect in hardened knots, wrapping around his body – small then, and even now – to taunt him, as if he could ever have anything other than hardened, slightly molding crusts dipped in warm tea to make it palatable. As if he could even claim to have the right to want anything more than that.

His brothers – the oldest just engaged – laugh at him, at the fear that he wears so plainly in his face. He was never good at hiding around his family; the camouflage comes later. The war paints, after that. Peeta practices his hand at frosting cakes, at shows of delicacy in a place that has no room for it. Golden daisies, small intricate roses with lightly opening petals, cursive letters of people's names. (The day of the reaping, he is placing a loaf in the oven, and his brother slams the edge of the baking sheet against his waist, knocking him forward; he burns his hands on the oven door and gets beat for being so stupid to leave the oven open that long. After all, Peeta, do you think they can afford to waste all that firewood? The charcoal?

And his brother, snickering behind his hand as he tries to soak the burns in cold water.)

The first reaping, the odds are in his favor: they do not come to collect his body.

He keeps his hands in the bowl of ice water until the skin turns bright red, fingers wrinkling. It isn't quite the thrill of escape he had hoped for.

* * *

The house grows worse, and Peeta learns about the way wood can slowly warp, the way it remains fixed and rigid, unable to be righted.

He wakes up too late in the morning to open the bakery and his mother grabs him by the neck and tosses him out of the bed. _Useless, good-for-nothing – might as well have had a daughter, the good you are_, she snarls, and he can smell the liquor on her breath already. She drags him to the bakery and does not let him eat.

There are lessons to be learned, Peeta thinks, and he spends the morning in the bakery watching her listing, shifting her weight between her feet like a sailor at sea, jaw a hard line against her face, cheeks lightly windburnt.

He used to love his mother, he thinks. He must have. Aren't all children supposed to love their mothers?

She catches him looking, and he immediately shifts his gaze, pressing his hands into the soft fleshy dough of the evening loaves.

"Peeta," she calls. "You going to work on that one project all day or – you know what? Go find your brothers. I don't need you." She snorts, and he wipes his hands on the front of the apron. "Lord knows how we're going to get rid of you when you're of age."

The kitchen door creaks and Peeta catches sight of his father, propping the door ajar with his hip, talking to a girl. Some game trussed up in a net.

He isn't quick enough to miss his mother's hit the second time. "Maybe one day the odds'll finally be in my favor, Peeta. What do you think?"

Peeta doesn't even flinch, biting hard into his tongue to distract himself. "Maybe," he says. She raises her eyebrows.

* * *

That night, there is squirrel stew on the table, to be eaten with the stale loaves from earlier that week. Peeta spends ten minutes scraping the mold off his chunk of the bread, eating as slowly as possible.

His mother and brothers split a bottle of liquor between them and by the end of dinner, the sound of their laughter echoes through the house. Peeta waits for them to finish before he clears everything up with his father, setting the dishes neatly into the sink.

"God," his brother hisses, wrapping his arms around his neck in a light hold, "Peeta, d'you ever get sick of being such a burden?"

He digs his nails into his brother's forearms, struggles with him against the kitchen counter as his mother howls with laughter.

"Oh, leave him be," she says, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. "Hardly fair, is it?"

Peeta elbows him in the gut, shoving him against the pantry for good measure. "Oh, look who's starting something now! Little Peeta, ready to be a man?"

Peeta throws his first punch, and bloodies his knuckles.

(His brother breaks his nose, and he tastes nothing but blood for days.)

* * *

And in his first strategy session with Haymitch, he sits with his hands folded in his lap and looks the man in the eye:

_The terms are this: we keep Katniss alive. At any cost._

Haymitch raises his eyebrows and doesn't ask any questions. Peeta knows a smart man when he sees one.

"Any cost?"

_Katniss –_

No one would miss me if I was gone. But her?

He trails off and Haymitch doesn't ask any more questions.

* * *

Peeta doesn't train with anyone. There are the bags of flour he heaves around the bakery, the solid wooden support beams in the corners of his room, and the hard unyielding floor.

It gets him farther than he thinks – a wrestling competition at school and the attention of girls his grade and grades younger who are fascinated with his hands – but in the end, he still isn't better than his brother.

He gets pinned to the mat, knees locked around his hips to keep him from rising, large hands braced around his neck. (For this, a small deduction; there are rules to be obeyed. Even in District Twelve.) He wins second place, and his medal is boxed and left for dust underneath his bed.

He takes the mirrors down in his room, can't look at himself without seeing the failure thick on his skin like dried paint.

The next day, when he returns from the bakery, they're hung on the walls again, glittering like jewels in the moonlight. He breaks each one, his hand slamming against them; it takes him hours to pull all the shards out of his hand.

* * *

By the time of the third reaping, Peeta's already a proficient student. He learns to smile, to dimple his cheeks at just the right way in just the right light to make himself appear sweet and innocent, learns the proper length of time to hold a gaze to intimidate, or to seduce, or to seem honest; the masks are simple enough and no one seems to notice the difference.

And in the cakes, he pours everything else. There has to be something of him, doesn't there? Even if people don't see it? Even if he has no idea how to locate what it is or where it is? There, in the buttercream ribbon along the edge of the sheet cake, there must be some part of Peeta Mellark that distinguishes him from all the other would-be cake-frosters in the world, right?

(At home, Peeta fills pages and pages with facts he knows about himself. There must be something to pick clean here, some universal truth to discover about himself – or is it that he must wait for death, for the vultures to pick the bones clean in order to determine the kind of person he was?

In the past, hadn't there been suspected heretics imprisoned and executed for that? Tossing animal bones into the fire and tapping them until they cracked to see the weight of a person's merit? The depths of their soul?

Peeta spends his nights not sleeping, writing his name over and over again with a light hand against napkins or spare butcher paper. Peeta Mellark, Peeta Mellark, Peeta Mellark. Sometimes print, sometimes cursive. The Ls looped sometimes, the Ls flat. The Ps connected to the rest of the name, the Rs round. He writes his name over and over again until his hand cramps, until the sun peeks through the window and he catches sight of the sunrise.

There must be something.)

* * *

The joke becomes:

_Oh, Peeta, still here?_

The odds are never in our favor!

To his merit, his father doesn't laugh; he stocks their table every few weeks with squirrel, each time cleanly killed through the eye – Peeta leaves his mother and brothers the larger portions and picks at the remains.

His father does not say anything, and Peeta wonders if his father is even present. He has seen the way miners' wives look just after an accident in the shaft – the glazed eyes, the matted hair, the gauntness that starts to show in the cheeks – and he wonders if he knows his father well enough to tell.

He wonders if he knows any of them well enough to tell.

* * *

Peeta studies people: the way they act when they buy bread from him, the way the mothers will smile when he compliments them, the way the men's faces will even out into blank expressions on their way home from the mine.

He watches the way his mother's expression will change hour to hour, with alcohol, without alcohol, the way her brows will lift slightly right before she raises her hand to him. Her wristbones seem extraordinarily small; that, too, he picks up.

He wonders if she had wanted something too before the bakery and before his father. He wonders if she had ever been terrified of being reaped.

* * *

Later, in the cave, his body pressed next to Katniss's in the sleeping bag, nearly delirious with fever, he asks her to take things back to his family.

Tell his brothers that he doesn't fault them. Tell his father that he thinks he was a coward, but that he understands.

Katniss doesn't say anything, simply smoothes the hair back from his forehead.

_It's silly, trying to get you to understand_, he says. _When people love you so much._

The secret he tries to tell her: that he has never known who he is, that he has always wanted to; that he has never been seen for who he was, only what others wanted to see; that no one has ever known him the way that she has known him here in the Games, here in the cave, that no one has cared enough.

Instead, he says _I love you_ and hopes that it will tell her these secrets. Katniss can read more into what isn't said than most other people. And she knows him. She knows the kind of person that he is, so she will know what he's saying, won't she?

And she smoothes the hair back from his forehead, pressing her lips to his temple and whispers for him to go to sleep. _You can't leave me, Peeta, okay? You can't, you can't. _

_Katniss_, he says, falling asleep, and he hopes she sees it for the prayer it is.

* * *

He gets reaped, of course, and the goodbyes with his family are brief:

His brothers tell him to avoid wrestling with anyone, to simply hide until most of the killing is done and then try his luck.

His mother brushes at his cheek with her hand – gentler than he has ever known her – and says, _Maybe this year District 12 will have a victor. She's a survivor._

He can hear her mother's soft laugh in the hallway.

His father embraces him, holds him for a few moments.

Peeta already knows how their day will proceed: the bakery will operate on regular hours as usual, and maybe, next year, they will rent his room out for extra money. Maybe they will finally be able to afford a loaf of their own.

The thought brings the taste of blood to the back of his throat.

* * *

In his room, there are lists – torn corners of notebook paper pages – stacked neatly in the corner. Some new recipes or ideas for bread that he wants to try. Others, reflections on mistakes he's made in his life. There are a few he keeps for record: the reaping lists.

Lists of what to do when his name is called, lists of who to say goodbye to, who to give what particular personal item. Not that he has much to give anyway. Delly Cartwright will get something of his, something small. She's always been a friend to him, even if he was never particularly honest with her.

It's his family that proves the worst to figure out.

It does not take Peeta the entirety of his life to realize that he is worth more to his family dead than alive; he will be one less mouth to feed – one less worker too, sure – but one less disgrace for the Mellark family name. And surely honor has to count somewhere.

There is his mother, and there are his brothers, and none of them will ever need anything from him once he has gone. Their lives may even be better for it.

Peeta writes his own eulogy on a leftover scrap of a napkin left on the counter of the bakery. _Here lies Peeta Mellark. He was –_

He burns the scrap in the oven until it's nothing but ash.

* * *

_Are you crazy? Get up! Get up! Run! Run!_

This is what Peeta has always known: whether or not Katniss thinks so, she has always deserved to win the Games more than he has. She has more at stake, she has more people at home to worry about. His mother was right: she is a survivor, and she would continue to survive even afterward.

And if she died? What would Peeta be left with but the burden of her loved ones' grief? How could he look anyone in the eye? And what would he do, hole up in the Victor's Village and drink until he goes blind?

Peeta finds Katniss in the mud, delirious from tracker jacker venom, and cannot bring himself to fail another person in his life.

Especially not Katniss.

She runs, and Cato bursts through the jungle. Peeta knows how the universe works.

* * *

The morning of his fourth reaping, Peeta chooses his best shirt: a light blue shirt with eggshell-colored buttons. He tries to iron it and make himself look as presentable as he can.

No one escorts him.

* * *

_It's time to choose our boy tribute!_

* * *

He supposes he never knew how to play the game after all: two large screens, both reflecting the shock of the moment on his face. Oh, yes, he'd prepared for it, but it had been a different thing to actually be chosen, hadn't it?

He thinks of the lists in his house, of the neatly folded piles of clothing he'd assumed he'd return to put away later. Newly laundered. And now the house will collect memories of him as it did everything else. The house has his blood in the grains of its wood, as much as anything else.

He stumbles to the stage, and Effie Trinket calls for volunteers.

He stumbles to the stage and does not miss the hard look in his mother's face, the way she squints at the stage as the wind howls around them, the slight tilt in her lips.

Yes, one less mouth to feed. It will make a difference for the rest of them; he supposes that out of all of them, it may as well have been him. Makes the grieving easier.

He turns and catches sight of Katniss, her jaw set, hands lying limp at her sides. She meets his gaze, and for the first time, he feels no compulsion to look away.

If she's going to kill him, he supposes he's owed at least this.

* * *

_No, you can't kill yourself!_

Peeta just blinks at her, the sun catching the lighter streaks of color in her hair, the wind pinking her cheeks. He could laugh, if he thinks about it. Hasn't he been doing this the entire time? Killing himself so that she could go back?

And now, for her to be here, playing a poor show at healer –

He brushes his hand across the top of her head.

_Katniss, it's what I want._

* * *

Haymitch pours himself another drink and asks him the question he's been waiting to ask all night: _Why?_ Peeta never supposed he'd have as much tact as he does.

_You know why._

The ice clinks against the edge of the glass. _Yeah, well. Say I don't._

Peeta sinks into one of the armchairs, curls his hands over the arms. "She has something waiting for her after."

Haymitch narrows his eyes. "And you?"

"I'm going to make sure she gets there."

Neither of them say anything. Haymitch pours Peeta a drink, leaning back into the chair, and Peeta sips at it; the liquor burns stronger than he thought, and it takes him a few more sips to feel the warmth that courses through him, that makes his blood suddenly pulse loudly in his ears. Strong, he thinks. It makes him feel strong.

"And you're absolutely sure?"

He doesn't hesitate. "There can only be one victor. It should be her."

* * *

At the horn of the Cornucopia and there can only be one victor; he can feel the leaden weight of his limbs hit him all at once.

Katniss still looks stunned, as if she hadn't been expecting this the entire time. He supposes maybe she hadn't.

He draws the knife and waits for her to pull the arrow.

* * *

Cato pins his body down, hundreds of pounds of sheer muscle, and uses the small hooked knife. There's something about it that reminds Peeta of Clove, the way he grips the handle and digs the end into Peeta's thigh.

He screams – he knows he can't help himself – and Cato just laughs, his face lighting up with a grin. "You let her get away?"

Peeta tries to claw at Cato's neck and Cato just pulls the knife downward, and Peeta can swear he feels it scratching along the bone.

"She isn't going to win this, you know. No matter what you do."

* * *

Katniss finds him, his leg cut to the bone, bleeding, nearly dead.

The Games are full of surprises.

* * *

He wakes up and she's bleeding from a gash in the forehead, unconscious. He cleans her wound and tries to figure out whether her condition is anything serious.

Her breathing seems to be easy enough, he thinks. But he isn't a healer.

He thinks of District Twelve watching them now, thinks of Katniss's family and friends looking on him. Risking her life to save him, as if he were anyone worth saving.

He presses a kiss to her forehead, and can't help but think that she's incredibly brave and incredibly stupid.

* * *

She thinks it's a joke.

He thinks of his room in the house – emptied now of his things, probably – and the bakery, still trying to get by, still trying to make a profit. The cakes will perhaps be frosted by his mother now, her shaking, unsteady hand a large contrast to his, but perhaps no one will notice.

He presses his thumb against the bruise at the back of his neck. The last place his mother had hit him.

_Don't die for me. You won't be doing me any favors. All right?_

* * *

Peeta escapes from Cato, bleeding, nearly dead.

He sinks into the mud and the marshy grass, covering his entire body. At least if he dies here, he can die looking up at the sky.

He does not think of his parents.

He sings the valley song to the wind – a last hymn – and waits for the cannon.


End file.
